Jonas Staal

Jonas Staal is a visual artist whose work deals with the relation between art, propaganda, and democracy. He is the founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit (est. 2012). Together with curator and dramaturg Florian Malzacher, he co-directs the training camp Training for the Future (est. 2018), and with human rights lawyer Jan Fermon, he initiated the collective action lawsuit Collectivize Facebook (begun 2020). With writer and lawyer Radha D’Souza, Staal founded the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (est. 2021), and with artist Laure Prouvost, he is co-administrator of the Obscure Union. Exhibition projects include Art of the Stateless State, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, 2015; After Europe, State of Concept, Athens, 2016; The Scottish-European Parliament, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, 2018; and Museum as Parliament (with the Democratic Self-Administration of Rojava), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2018–. His projects have been exhibited widely at venues such as the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, M HKA – Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and Nam June Paik Art Center in Seoul, as well as the 7th Berlin Biennale, 31st Bienal de São Paulo, and 12th Taipei Biennial. Publications include Nosso Lar, Brasília (Jap Sam Books, 2014), Stateless Democracy (co-edited with Dilar Dirik and Renée In der Maur, BAK, 2015), Steve Bannon: A Propaganda Retrospective (Het Nieuwe Instituut, 2018), and Propaganda Art in the 21st Century (MIT Press, 2019). Staal completed his PhD research on propaganda art within the PhDArts program of Leiden University, the Netherlands.